Is the liberal order dying?

My short contribution to the conference

"The end of the liberal order?"at New Bulgarian University, 

6 June 2017, Sofia 

I will address two questions:

1. Is the liberal order, i.e. liberal democracy as the dominant political regime in the contemporary world really dying?

2. Who is to blame for its decline?

1.   Is liberal democracy really dying?      

No immediate danger of extinction. Rather, the danger is of gradual subversion, of malignant mimicry – due to reinterpretations of its core values and principles – that of moral individualism

The news of liberal order’s death is a gross overstatement (or fake news, if you prefer).

Though certainly in crisis, liberal democracy is not in immediate danger of extinction – not in the CEE region, at least.

Neither the ruling elites nor the electorate are ready to altogether abandon it.

Popular support in the region for the EU, if recently declining, remains high. And EU is still largely believed to come packaged with liberal democratic values and principles.  Thus it is not so much the external pressure – the danger of invoking art. 7 of Lisbon Treaty, but the internal unpopularity of questioning adherence to the EU and its core liberal-democratic principles, which partly accounts for this reluctance to openly abandon it.

To demonstrate the dangers of openly questioning some of these principles, it suffices to mention just one recent case –

“democracy has  taken a lot away from us”, Kornelia Ninova said, and this phrase

 the lapsus of the leader of the socialists in Bulgaria -  almost certainly costed the socialists the electoral victory in March 2017 snap elections. The critics now know that they have to pay at least a lip service to the principles of democracy, if not to “liberalism” per se.

I will open a bracket here –

There is a growing confusion in Bulgaria, but not only here, about what the liberal order is - does it simply denote the dominance of liberal democracy as a preferred political regime comprising various components (popular rule limited by respect for individual rights, limited government and rule of law, and competitive market) or is it also the dominance of liberalism as a specific ideology, as a doctrine? It has recently become a commonplace, almost a mainstream attack on liberalism to criticize its “exaggerated” concern with liberal individual and minority rights. Yet those critics rarely dare go all the way to challenging the core principles of liberal democracy such as popular rule with limited government and rule of law – which ultimately serve the interests and indeed - the rights of the every individual citizen.

This shows, I think, that here is still a wide post-transition consensus on the direction taken – we are all liberal democracies now and will likely remain such.

Yet what we witness today is a process of re-interpreting the fundamental principles of liberal democracy - a reinterpretation that risks subverting its rationale, its underlying values. 

I would argue that this process of re-interpretation has started much earlier – it is not just a post-transition phenomenon. This reinterpretation, I would argue, is partly responsible for the crisis of liberal democracy we are witnessing now.

This reinterpretation is (at least) a two-step process, which has been going on for some time now

1.            Already during the transition there have been considerable misreadings of the principles. These misreadings may be due

a.            to the lack of an alternative (may be it was perceived as a “forced” choice), or,

b.            to the swift adoption of new institutions without the necessary time for developing the useful conventions – the right ethos – needed to sustain them and make them capable of truly realizing the principles they were built to implement.

2.            Whatever the explanation for these misreadings  a.they have often been unintentional, b.     even the result of well-intentioned efforts to fill the empty shell of institutions with context-specific content,

3.            these misreadings are today made worse by a second wave of reinterpretations (neither neutralizing nor correcting the initial misunderstanding). What we witness today, however, is not always well-intentioned, and, surely, is a much less benign confusion.  Post-transition national elites that displaced the much hated transition elites often intentionally, fully self-consciously reinterpret the principles with the aim of serving their purposes – clinging to power at all costs – which means - ultimately subverting them (as they limit their power).

4.            The end result is not even empty shell institutions – but a threatening mimicry. A mimicry , produced by the opportunistic post-transition elites.

The post-transition elites act much like free-riders,  capitalizing on the sacrifices of the transition elites on whose backs they climbed to power.

What are the substantive reinterpretations of the fundamental principle of liberal democracy that may partly explain its current crisis?

Take the  fundamental principle of liberal democracy - equal rights and freedoms for all members  of the democratic community. This is the ideal of liberal equality, which requires equal respect for the freedom and autonomy of each citizen. It is well captured by the slogan  “Everyone counts and counts equally.” In this principle  the individual is at the centre of the moral universe. Ronald Dworkin called this normative idea “moral individualism”

This normative idea behind liberal democracy was, at the first step of misunderstanding, interpreted as “radical individualism”.  The vision of a democratic community we were presented with during the transition was that  of self-standing individuals, owing their success only to themselves, owing nothing to nobody else. This distorted vision of democratic community is far removed from the genuine normative ideal of “moral individualism”, which demands a moral community of equals to cherish and advance it.  Its misinterpretation as radical individualism, on the contrary, destroys any community.

Understandably, there has been a justified popular dissatisfaction with this radical reinterpretation of individualism. Yet the form this dissatisfaction took was not, as one would expect - of going back to the original aspirations behind “moral individualism”  - i.e. to the aspiration for equal rights and fair equality of opportunity for all.

Rather, there was a further transformation, re-interpretation of this ideal – and this is the second step in its reinterpretation already in the post-transition period.  Now we are told that equality of rights and freedoms is, at best, a relationship that holds within the majority, within the presumably homogeneous core of the nation, and does not include those we do not like, those we perceive as different, those we perceive as “other”, those with whom we disagree. The vision is that of community of unequals – with a core, majority enjoying privileges, which it is ready to defend with majoritarian means against the outsiders – be it dissenting individuals or disliked minorities..

It is in line with this second reinterpretation that one can understand why some (right-wing, avowedly pro-EU) political parties in Bulgaria openly argued for the introduction of a de facto literacy test for the exercise of political rights (this was their explicit justification for the introduction of exclusive machine voting in parliamentary elections. The aim was, of course, to exclude the Roma as they  are “corrupting our democracy by selling their votes”)

To conclude: the normative ideal behind liberal democratic institutions – the moral equality of individual members of the democratic community, which justifies putting breaks on the popular will of majorities, is currently being  transformed into an opportunity for those majorities to retain their higher status and privileges against what they perceive as adverse developments and threats to those privileges.

2. Who is to blame for its decline? Meritocratic elites and the ideal of fair equality of opportunity

The misinterpretation of the principles of liberal democracy I outlined here is only partly responsible for the crisis this political regime is currently undergoing. The misinterpretation did not fall from heaven, however, but was given by the governing elites – both transition and post-transition ones.

The current crisis of liberal democracy is often described as the rise of populism , which is defined, among other things, as a revolt of the people (bearers of true sovereignty) against the corrupt elites.

Let be clear about one thing – what we witness today is not a revolt of the sovereign against the elites, but  an orchestrated by an aspiring new elite revolt against the old elites they want to displace. The success of the newcomers depends on how attractive is their new vision of a relationship between the elite and the people and whether it is seen by the people as more attractive than the outgoing alternative. 

The populist revolt epitomizing the current crisis, we are told, is a revolt against a particular types of elite, characteristic of liberal representative democracies – the meritocratic elite.  Indeed, some authors (Nancy Fraser, Ivan Krastev, Stehen Holmes) describe the  current global crisis of liberal democracy as a crisis of meritocratic elites, of meritocracy as the model of liberal democracy under late capitalism.

Not a fully satisfactory account of what is happening in CEE: the elites that pushed through the transition agenda were often not meritocratic, as indeed they did not emerge as victorious – did not win the right to rule - under fair competition terms. 

 Even in developed, consolidated democracies popular representation through meritocratic elites was never a fully realized aspiration. Why so?   simply because in no country the underlying premise of a true meritocracy – fair equality of opportunity – is fully met.

But this is not the only trouble with it, we are told by its critics – even if fair equality of opportunity would be guaranteed, meritocracy may still be in trouble – simply because the average citizen rarely identifies with a representative of such elites, even if they emerged under fair competition rules.

Not surprisingly, the elites that took over in the post-crisis period are media savvy personalities with whom the average citizen more readily identifies herself.

The defining feature of post-transition national elites (that displaced the elites, responsible for the transitional institution-building) is not merit, but belonging – they are claiming to have a quasi -“natural” right to  represent the people – as they are uniquely qualified to express the authentic concerns and interests of the respective nations.

The question is why  is this view of national quasi-tribal elites currently appealing and what has contributed to the discreditation of the meritocratic elites?

Meritocracy is both ex ante (most fair – based solely on personal achievements) and ex post (producing best results – best qualified rulers)  the best way to recruit elites in a representative democracy.

The two premises – fair equality of opportunity and success based  solely on personal achievement, however, may account for its current troubles

Both the psychological profile of meritocrats – highly individualistic, arrogant, self-made and self-reliant, opportunistic “mercenaries” with no loyalty to any community, and the fact that losing in fair competition makes the loser more not less miserable (he is only to blame for his failings) are responsible for the growing distance between such elites and their communities.

But what is the alternative?

The alternative - non-meritocratic, tribal elites, however, seem worse. They promise closing the competition for outsiders without guaranteeing it will be fair  or open for the insiders (Trump). The bitter losers may be OK with this – better close it for outsiders – if we are not succeeding, then they should also not succeed...... “

I would hypothesize that if meritocratic elites learn to be less arrogant and acknowledge their loyalty towards their communities and their duty to keep  the opportunities open for all within this community  - i.e. if they start interpreting correctly the values and  principles behind liberal democracy – i.e. the principle of moral individualism -  they may be capable of surviving this crisis. And so may liberal democracy restore its credibility as the best, compared to the available alternatives, political regime.